The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant

Rating 3 of 5

The Nvidia Way is one of those typical business books that get written when a company is very successful. Mostly holding the company in high regard and giving a lot of credit to the CEO/Founder/Whatever. So in that sense the book is rather generic. Its not especially critical of Nvidia or Jensen Huang and it really doesn’t dish much dirt.

What I enjoyed about the book was the trip it took me through the 1990’s and early 2000’s. I remembered the Vodoo2 and the RIVA 128. Myself I could never afford such expensive computer equipment just to play games but it was still cool to get a review of the history of the graphics card and how these companies fought to control the market.

I do think Jensen is a pretty good executive and he seems like a honest and well meaning person. The book levels a few criticisms at Jensen:

• That Jensen can be abrasively competitive. The example of Jensen feeling the need to win at even irrelevant competitions with his subordinates like ping pong and chess. And maybe being a little small when he couldn’t beat someone.
• That Jensen is a workaholic. The book indicates that Jensen has very few interests outside of Nvidia. Jensens relationship with his children and wife are not discussed except to indicate Jensen would work while on vacation with them.
• That Jensen can be highly critical of employees in public. Aggressively berating them down publicly to the embarrassment of the employee and those witnessing the event.

The book paints Nvidia as a high pressure environment where employees are expected to work long hours.

The most interesting part of the book is the first half where you learn the history of Jensen and his co-founders Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky. You mostly learn about Curtis and Chris’s careers at Sun Microsystems. Description of Jensen’s time at AMD and LSI Logic is a more sparse. You’re left with the impression that the early driver of the technology at the company was Curtis Priem.
Sometimes it does not paint Curtis particularly well, describing his poor salesmanship of the company when trying to get VC capital and his failure in design with the NV1 (the first graphics card product nvidia made).

Jensen’s personal story about being born in Taiwan and his parents mistakenly sending him to a boarding school for wayward youth in Kentucky are entertaining stories. Jensen is shown to be a typical teenager when he stays out all night in Vegas rather then sleep the night before a major ping pong tournament. His time as a Denny’s waiter is kind of a fun anecdote.

The founding of Nvidia is an good story. Its funny how the first two or three weeks Jensen, Curtis and Chris really didn’t know what to do. They would meet at one of their houses and mostly talk about where they were going to go for lunch. Their early meetings with VC’s went poorly and they mostly were given money based on their network - mostly based on Jensen’s relationship with LSI Logic founder Wilf Corrigan. Once they get money they design two failed products the NV1 and the NV2, nearly run out of money and then finally hit a home run with the RIVA128. I do think Jensen’s resilience is impressive. I probably would have given up.

After the early history is told the story kind of devolves in covering Nvidia’s win-after-win. Winnng the graphics market and inventing CUDA and then hitting a homerun with AI. I found this part of the story much less interesting. Some drama is shared around some activist investors feeling Nvidia was over invested in R&D and not churning out enough cash, but its rather mild.

The book does get into the market flop of the NV30, but it doesn’t spend to much time on it. You get the sense that the failure was one of employee integration and it doesn’t go into great detail in how Jensen “fixed this”. The failure may have been largely driven by Jensen trying to play hardball with Microsoft over DirectX API licensing and losing.

Jensen’s leadership style is covered in depth

• Working long hours, be humble and learn a lot.
• Have lots of direct and open meetings with all employees
• Interface a lot with individual contributor level engineers
• Have high expectations for all employees
• Expect employees to work together with a strong focus on doing well for Nvidia. Don’t let individual ego’s ruin the company
• Be highly competitive, pursue the high end of the market focused on the bottom line
• Be ready to collaborate openly in meetings. Being able to talk competently about what you do on a white board is important.

The book paints Nvidia as very dependant on Jensen as a leader. No Jensen, no nvidia.

The book concludes with numerous Jensen aphorisms that I enjoyed. My top three favorites:

• As many as needed, as few as possible
• LUA - Listen to the Question, Understand the Question, Answer the question. Jenses way of saying stop bullshitting me.
• You got to believe, what you got to believe.

All in all the Nvidia way is a good book and its nice to get some insider perspective on Jensen. I think the book was a little bit of a fluff piece. I didn’t really give a lot of critique to Jensen or Nvidia. I think it could have pushed a little harder there.

While reading the book I often thought: Would I like working at Nvidia? I’m not sure. I really liked Jensen’s no-sense leadership style. I think culturally I would have appreciated working in such a direct no bullshit environment. In my 20’s and 30’s I think I wouldn’t have minded the long hours. Now however in my mid forties I’m not sure I have the stomach for a job like Nvidia. Spending so much time working can really take away from your relationships with you kids, friends and spouse. Its a high price to pay for basically money and at the end of the day no one really remembers you once you leave a place like Nvidia. Its just on to the next thing. In 2022 I tried very hard to get a job there and was rejected after two phone screens with managers. This is probably a testament to Nvidia. I wasn’t ready to work a job that asked for 60+ hours a week. Maybe they saw that?

Anyway as far as business books the Nvidia way is ok. Not great but not bad. I’d put it way above The Hard Thing About Hard Things (which I thought was crap) and below Shoe Dog which I thought was a more balanced view of the leader and the company. I hope Jensen takes the time to ghost write a autobiography sometime. I think it could be good.